Saturday, November 27, 2010

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.

The fund is administered by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Union officials said the state compelled the fund to start buying coverage from a third party, which increased premiums by 60%. State health officials denied forcing the union fund to make the switch, saying the fund had been struggling financially even before the switch to third-party coverage.

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.

The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU. The union fund pools contributions from several home-care agencies and then buys insurance from Fidelis.

“In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Ned May at Big Peace presents a special writeup by a Belgian correspondent that warns how Turkey is gaining ground within the European Union in an effort that could silence free speech about Islam, by equating religion with race for starters. This is something which must be opposed if Islamofascism is to be dealt with properly.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

This is what's being reported now, not to mention that no letter from the Obama administration is forthcoming that provides guarantees in exchange for a building freeze:

As Israel waits for a letter clarifying America's guarantees in exchange for a proposed building ban for Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, a diplomatic source has come forward saying that no such letter is on its way. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton misled Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and contrary to reports, the U.S. does not guarantee an end to the freeze, the source said.

The source, a senior diplomat with inside knowledge of Netanyahu's recent meetings in Washington, said Clinton made commitments when talking to Netanyahu, but later slipped out of them by claiming that she had not been speaking on behalf of U.S. President Obama – who, she said in the end, did not give his approval.

When Netanyahu called the State Department to clarify America's position, officials expressed surprise at his surprise, the source continued. While Clinton made promises, Netanyahu knew from the beginning that Obama has the final word, they allegedly said.

Clinton had told Netanyahu that the proposed construction freeze would last for three months, and that it would end regardless of whether or not there was progress in talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. After that, she said, America would not push for a third building freeze.

However, according to the diplomat, U.S. leaders have since said that the building ban for Jews in Judea and Samaria would only end if Israel and the PA reached an agreement on the borders of a proposed PA state.

Oh, it wouldn't end even then; it'd be just beginning. The Obama administration won't provide any trustworthy agreement, and Fatah won't cooperate.

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert took a rare public jab at his successor on Thursday, saying that Israel should agree to the US demand to halt settlement construction in the West Bank in order to restart Mideast peace talks.

Olmert suggested Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration are wasting valuable time by focusing on such a "marginal" issue, rather than tackling the essential issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [...]

Speaking to foreign correspondents, he said he wouldn't have agreed to a settlement freeze in the first place, saying it was more important to focus on larger issues like final borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. But he said he would not turn down a request from Israel's closest ally and endanger ties.

"If someone says that he agrees to 10 months of freezing and the president of the mightiest nation on earth and friendliest nation to Israel comes to you and says 'please give me two (more) months, only two months,' I mean what could happen in two months?" he said. "I would say 'president, why two? Why not three? Take three!"

Olmert said both Israel and the US should instead focus on reaching a final peace deal with the Palestinians.

Since leaving office, Olmert has confirmed he made Israel's most far-reaching offer to the Palestinians, proposing a Palestinian state on close to 94 percent of the West Bank, and offering them the equivalent of the final 6 percent of territory in a land "swap."

Olmert said the Palestinians never responded to his offer, made in the final months of his term in office.

"I think that they made a mistake. I think that the fact that they didn't respond to my proposal was a historic mistake of the highest order that they will live to regret for a long time, until someone will come from our side with the same ideas," he said.

The Olmert plan would have also have turned over Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to Palestinian control. Jerusalem's Old City, with its holy sites, one of the most intractable issues dividing the sides, was to be governed jointly by Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, he said.

Olmert really knows how to make you groan with his awfulness. His plan would only be a fiasco for one and all. A truly pitiful man indeed.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

"Islam teaches men to hate women. It also teaches Muslim men to hate the kuffar. Thus, it teaches Muslim men to hate kuffar women to an even greater degree.Of course there is grooming, abuse and rape in other cultures. But not every religion teaches its adherents that non-believing women can be treated as 'booty'! Read the Koran. Study Islam. Then you will realise why there is a massive problem with Muslim men grooming, raping and abusing non-Muslim women." Rest here.

These are muslims who have lived their whole lives in the West, going to English schools, being surrounded by English culture. However, the fact they probably attended madrassas from an early age, show that they have NEVER in any way integrated. All this with the full knowledge of the British government. Sick!

A few weeks ago, I spoke about the leftist moral equation graphic novel "How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less", and it looks like I wasn't far off in my sad guesses that this was another of many modern day comics that gives the industry a bad name. This article from the Nashua Telegraph/Scripps Howard has a few more clues as to how insulting Sarah Glidden's leftist bias is to the intellect:

Sarah Glidden’s debut graphic novel “How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less” (DC/Vertigo, $24.99) registers in a lot of categories, and is charming and thoughtful in all of them.

On the surface, at least, “Israel” could be pigeonholed into that fast-growing category of the first-person graphic novel travelogue, like “Joe and Azat” and “Burma Chronicles.” Glidden’s ironically named book is about a “Birthright Tour” she and her gal pal/sounding board Melissa take to Israel. As such, the reader gets to travel with her to famous (and infamous) places such as the Golan Heights, Masada, the al-Aqsa mosque, the Western Wall and the Dead Sea.

And the writer of this sugarcoated smut says all this without clearly distinguishing between any of them. Which are famous and which aren't? I don't see the point of that absurd part in parenthesis.

It’s also something of a book exploring Middle Eastern politics, as discussion and argument about “the situation” ensues between the pro-Palestinian Sarah and her guides and fellow travelers, who hold a variety of opinions (or, like Melissa, none at all).

This places “Israel” in the fine company of other graphic novels that do similar heavy lifting about this thorny subject, such as Joe Sacco’s “Palestine” and “Footnotes in Gaza.”

Oh dear. He's comparing it to the works of an anti-Israel moonbat who's admitted he doesn't care for objectivity. Amazingly, he verifies that something is wrong with Glidden's political positions, and that she buys into the libel of a "palestinian people" that even Golda Meir said was non-existent. Why then should this be charming?

Glidden expects the Birthright Tour to brainwash her, and she has shields up and phasers on stun throughout. But, to her surprise, the presentation isn’t always pro-Zionist, and sometimes threatens to be balanced and reasonable.

Oh, I get it. If it's pro-Zionist, it's NOT balanced? There's where the writer of this propaganda piece really takes a dangerous swerve into hostile-to-Israel territory, and makes himself as bad - possibly worse - than Glidden. One more reason why this isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and is just as horrid as Joe Sacco's own works.

After years of feeling betrayed by the legislative process, settlers on Tuesday quietly celebrated the Knesset’s passage late the previous night of the National Referendum Law, which they believe will make it much harder to create a Palestinian state.

“This is very good news, because we know that an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian state and the evacuation of settlements,” said Naftali Bennett, the director- general of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

[...]

Until Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had to bring any peace deal that involved relinquishing sovereign Israeli territory to the Knesset, where it needed an absolute majority of 61 to pass.

But as of Monday night, according to the National Referendum Law, which Netanyahu himself supported, he would need 80 MKs to ratify any diplomatic agreement that involved giving away sovereign Israeli territory.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday condemned as an obstacle to peace the new law requiring the approval of 80 MKs or a national referendum before any Israeli withdrawal from east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

“This law is aimed at placing obstacles in front of a peace settlement,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah, where he inaugurated a new headquarters for the PLO. “The Israelis are telling the world that they won’t withdraw from Jerusalem and the Golan.”

And the Muslims are telling us they will never recognize our legitimacy.

Instead of subjecting everyone to a physical search, the TSA should be profiling and subjecting likely terrorists to thorough physical and electronic searches.

But that's not PC. And Obama and the Left are nothing if they're not PC.

Leftists would rather we waste time and money and treat everyone as if we were alike, than sensibly and rationally target a single group.

Which is ironic and hypocritical in a big way, for leftists are otherwise always groupists who think people should get special treatment based on their membership in certain groups. Blacks, LGBT, aged, immigrant, Hispanic - these groupings are all acceptable and useful to Leftists when it comes to affirmative action and doling out welfare.

But if you rationally want to apply security measures to a group which is much more likely to commit terror, then the Left - and the MSM they dominate will accuse you of being a racist or a bigot.

THIS IS INCREDIBLY HYPOCRITICAL OF THE LEFT.

Why do they favor treating people as part of a group sometimes but not other times?

It's simple: they favor groupings only when they hurt the West or the USA or people they see as "the ruling class".

The Left LOVES making and using groupings only when they come down on the anti-American side: if groupism can hurt the USA or the west or Judeo-Christian civilization, then they are for it.

If it helps our civilization - or our nation or our allies, then they're against it.

This animosity to the West and the USA as the leader of the Free World is a foundational principle of the Left. And this foundational animosity to the west makes them a lot like the jihadists.

It's why the Left and jihadists have an affinity, why Chavez likes Ahmadinejad and why ANSWER likes the ISA and the PLO as much as they like North Korea.

This is why they run interference for the jihadists. This is why Obama and Holder announced they were going to give KSM a civilian rial in NYC - after he had pleaded guilty in military tribunal. This is why they leak and leak and leak sensitive national security data over and over again. This is why they want to close GITMO and set deadlines for war. AND SO ON...

And this is why I have long argued that if we want to defeat the jihadist enemy, then we have to defeat the Left.

WHY!? Because both ideologies are all about limiting inidividual freedom and liberty and telling individuals how to live. YOU NEED A STRONG STATE TO ACCOMPLISH THAT. And because both are utopianist ideologies, they feel that having a strng state which takes away our rights - and even commits genocide - is worth it. Muhamed, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol, Pot - they all justified their genocidal anti-libertarian exploits by arguing that it was necessary to bring about UTOPIA.

Detailed analysis of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes reveals a secret that’s been hidden for 500 years: an image of the human brainstem in a panel showing God at the beginning of Creation, according to an article in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

July 19, 2010 – Detailed analysis of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes reveals a secret that’s been hidden for 500 years: an image of the human brainstem in a panel showing God at the beginning of Creation, according to an article in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

“We don’t know exactly how coordinated it is, but it would be naïve to assume that they’re not cooperating on centrifuges,” said Pete Hoekstra (R.-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee…

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that any American proposal for restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations must include a complete halt in Israeli settlement building, including in East Jerusalem.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Abbas’s position, which is consistent with Palestinian policy, would scuttle a proposed deal that the Americans hope will lead to resumption of the negotiations. In the past Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have found ways to surmount such difficulties.

Speaking to reporters in Cairo after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Abbas said that he had received no official American proposal regarding the peace process, but that for negotiations to take place, “there has to be a complete halt in settlements in all the Palestinian lands, first and foremost in Jerusalem.” His remarks were carried by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Mr. Netanyahu has been considering an additional 90-day moratorium on the construction of settlement homes in the West Bank in return for security and diplomatic benefits from the United States. Israeli officials said on Sunday that Mr. Netanyahu was still waiting for a letter from the Americans spelling out details of those benefits, including the amount of a United States subsidy to Israel to buy 20 advanced American fighter aircraft.

Mr. Abbas said in Cairo that American-Israeli military deals were not his concern, but that tying such deals to a resumption of the peace negotiations was “unacceptable.”

THE FIRST TEMPORARY FREEZE DIDN'T INCLUDE JERUSALEM; THERE'S NO REASON TO INCLUDE IT NOW IN ANY 90 EXTENSION.

SINCE OBAMA'S ELECTION, THE ARABS HAVE NEGOTIATED LIKE THEY WON ALL THE ARAB-ISRAELI WARS.

Obama has ordered federal workers to either bombard US citizens with radiation OR feel our genitals.

Rather than target the Muslims who are attacking us [WITH PROFILING], Obama has demanded that US citizens be subjected to unreasonable searches of our genitals or be irradiated.

ARE THESE THE DECISIONS OF A MAN WHO LIKES AMERICANS?

No.

These are the decisions of a man who would rather appease Muslims and offend Americans, than defeat America's enemies here and abroad.

REPEAT:

ON THE ONE HAND, OBAMA HAS GIVEN ENEMY COMBATANTS LIKE KSM RIGHTS THEY DON'T HAVE OR DESERVE, AND AT THE SAME TIME SUBJECTED INNOCENT AMERICANS WITH NO RECORD OF TERRORIST CONNECTIONS OF ANY KIND - WHO ARE TRAVELING WITHIN THE USA - TO UNREASONABLE SEARCHES.

ON THE OTHER HAND, BUSH KEPT US SAFER BY TREATING THE ENEMY THEY WAY THEY DESERVED TO BE TREATED - AND BY TREATING US CITIZENS THE WAY WE DESERVED TO BE TREATED.

Obama might as well be a jihadist; he's no more effective in WW4 than Hamid Karzai.

EXIT QUESTION:

IF OBAMA REALLY WAS A CRYPTO-MUSLIM AND/OR A LEFTIST WHO WANTED TO NEUTER AMERICA AND MAKE THE USA AND THE WEST SUBSERVIENT TO ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST INSTITUTIONS, THEN WOULD HE BE DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY?

“I think the American people are worried when they see an administration worried about reading Miranda rights to the underwear bomber,” Jindal said. “[They're] so worried about rights of the terrorists, what about the rights of innocent American travelers?”…

“I’m concerned out of political correctness we’re screening people that don’t need it,” Jindal said, adding that TSA should look at passengers’ travel patterns, how they purchased their ticket and other information to screen which passengers pose a threat…

EXACTLY.

UPDATE #2:NOTE TO MOHARAM: AS POTUS, OBAMA IS AS RESPONSIBLE FOR TSA ORDERS AS HE IS FOR NAPOLITANO'S AND VALERIE JARRET'S.

THE BUCK STOPS ON OBAMA'S DESK.

THEREFORE, WHEN I WROTE THAT "OBAMA ORDERED" IT IS NOT AN UNTRUTH.

OBAMA HAS SYSTEMATICALLY MADE US LESS SAFE - AND AS A DIRECT RESULT WE HAVE BEEN ATTACKED MORE HERE IN THE USA IN OBAMA'S 2 YEARS, THAN WE WERE DURING BUSH'S 8.

UNDER OBAMA WE ARE GETTING LESS INTEL' AND TREATING THE ENEMY NICER THAN UNDER BUSH.

AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS BEING HARSHER TO USA CITIZENS.

THESE ARE FACTS.

YOU ARE ENTITLED TO YOUR OWN TWISTED VIEWS, BUT NOT YOUR OWN FACTS.

ASIDE/BTW, MHORUM:

I HAVE A BA IN ANTHRO' AND PHIL' WITH A MINOR IN HIST AND AN MA - BOTH FROM FROM MAJOR UNIVERSITIES. I EARNED THE MA IN A YEAR AND A HALF. I AM NEITHER DUMB NOR IGNORANT.

I HAVE BEEN A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT SINCE 1974. I VOTED FOR CARTER.

BUT I WOKE UP.

I NOW SEE REAGAN AND THATCHER WERE RIGHT AND GOOD.

AND I HAVE SEEN - FROM THE GET-GO - OBAMA FOR WHAT HE TRULY IS:

THE KIND OF HARDCORE POSTMODERN LEFTIST I GREW UP WITH AND WENT TO COLLEGE WITH AND WENT TO GRAD SCHOOL WITH.

OBAMA - LIKE HIS MOTHER AND FATHER - LOVES THIS COUNTRY AS MUCH AS BILL AYERS AND REVEREND WRIGHT AND ANGELA DAVIS AND HERBERT MARCUSE AND NOAM CHOMSKY.

EVERYTHING OBAMA HAS DONE REFLECTS THAT "LOVE", AND HIS DEEP TIES TO THE CORRUPT CHICAGO MACHINE AND THE FEDERAL AXIS OF TAXES (THE GOVERNMENT UNION/PROFESSIONAL DEMOCRAT PARTY POLITICIAN COMPLEX).

I HAVE LONG ARGUED THAT MUSLIMS WHO PREACH SHARIA ARE COMMITTING SEDITION AND SHOULD BE CHARGED, TRIED, CONVICTED AND JAILED OR SENT VOLUNTARILY DEPORTED. NON-CITIZENS WHO PREACH SHARIA SHOULD BE DEPORTED.

TAKING ACTIONS AND ENGAGING IN A CONSPIRACY TO TO OVERTHROW THE CONSTITUTION ARE NOT ACTIONS PROTECTED BY THE CONSTITUTION; THEY ARE CRIMES.

Warning to Muslims who believe that the public space can be invaded without consequences.

For a number of years, certain of you muslim gentlemen dare to regularly occupy the public space for your prayers.

This occupation, as you well know, is illegal, and is, as we well know, a provocation and a demonstration of force designed to show your domination in certain parts of France and your contempt for our laws and the secular nature of our country.

These politico-cultural demonstrations are in defiance of our institutions and our culture, they put our territorial integrity under pressure with the aim of forcing the construction of mosques, which are often financed by the money of non-muslims who then find themselves victims of gigantic rackets in which our elected officials are complicit.

Muslim militias and certain muslims totally illegally block the streets to non-muslims, preventing the citizens and residents from circulating, returning home or leaving their houses and the mayors say nothing, the police say nothing, the State says nothing.

Thus it remains for the French Nation, to the citizens themselves to take over because all their representatives have spinelessly bent over in the face of intimidation.

The message sent out by the French nation to the “praying” is clear:

Stop praying immediately on the public highway, it is illegal. Pray elsewhere, or don’t pray, we couldn’t care less about that. Nothing gives you the right to occupy our streets, you must respect our laws.

North Korea showed a visiting American nuclear scientist last week a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium, confronting the Obama administration with the prospect that the country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb.

Whether the calculated revelation is a negotiating ploy by North Korea or a signal that it plans to accelerate its weapons program even as it goes through a perilous leadership change, it creates a new challenge for President Obama at a moment when his program for gradual, global nuclear disarmament appears imperiled at home and abroad. The administration hurriedly began to brief allies and lawmakers on Friday and Saturday — and braced for an international debate over the repercussions.

The scientist, Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who previously directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an interview that he had been “stunned” by the sophistication of the new plant, where he saw “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges that had just been installed, and that were operated from what he called “an ultra-modern control room.” The North Koreans claimed 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running, he said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked the US to release Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard as part of a series of gestures made to Israel in an effort to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, sources with knowledge of the talks told The Jerusalem Post over the weekend.

Sunday is the 25th anniversary of Pollard’s arrest at the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He is serving a life sentence in prison in Butner, North Carolina, for passing classified information to an ally, a charge that normally carries a sentence of no more than 10 years.

When Army Radio first reported last month that Pollard’s name had been raised in talks with senior American officials about restarting the settlement freeze, Israeli officials denied that his fate was on the bargaining table. But sources confirmed that Netanyahu and American officials had discussed whether Pollard’s release could persuade Israeli ministers to accept another moratorium.